Back in 1998. I was doing my Residence in General Medicine in Santa Clara. Villa Clara. Cuba, it was noon and I was set out to see my last patient. He was a 10-year-old boy brought to the clinic by his mother. He looked like a bit overweight and reported intermittent headache for more than two days. Upon taking medical history, the only positive complain was a frontal headache lasting about an hour with no other accompanying symptom.

At physical examination, there was nothing relevant, in my opinion, to point out. I must confess that I was somewhat bewildered about the cause of the headache. However, I explained to the mother that this pain could be the result of multiple causes while I was ordering a routine checkup. The patient was prescribed pain killers and I advised the mother that if something new raised to go the nearest health center. At the stage, the patient was ready to leave the office I came up with the idea to measure his blood pressure (BP) and to my surprise, he had 140 mmHg of systolic blood pressure with 95 mmHg of diastolic blood pressure. Undoubtedly, that was the cause of the persistent headache. I said to myself: “this patient is hypertensive and he is only 11 years old, what should I do?” Continue reading “The uncertain beginnings and the “why” of this blog.”

It is really great to post the European Society of Cardiology/European Society of Hypertension Guidelines about Arterial Hypertension. Just presented at the 28 th European Meeting of HTN and cardiovascular protection held last June in Barcelona.

Such a great honor having been there when the guideline was publicly released for first time.